bea

peddler of smut and hard-won joy | gender agonist | old as fuck | minors, begone | ao3: Bea Arthur Pendragon | twitter: @pendragonbea (as long as it lasts)

[beaarthurpendragon]

Just posted: Then a Small Thing Happened

Summary: After a Russian bomb in Ukraine ends combat photographer Bucky Barnes’ career several decades ahead of schedule, he returns to the lake house he hasn’t visited since his parents died to put the pieces back together over the long, lonely winter. He’s got no idea what his life is supposed to look like now that he’s not constantly on the move and facing danger every day, but an unexpected friendship with his elderly neighbor—and then her astronaut son—leads to the kind of connection he never thought he’d get to have.

(A holiday fic, sort of. Posting Sundays and Wednesdays through Dec. 21.)

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[nbarpf]

You can make friends over the internet by posting about wanting to see male celebrities having gay sex

[thedreadedmobyduck-deactivated2]

I love Amos Burton, love the way you can see the little ding in his brain when he decides someone is worth killing and dying for

[nerevarbignaturals]

This one's for the asexuals who love 2 jerk off and are kinky n shit but also would not touch irl sex with a ten foot pole if you paid them. I love you, I am you, please never stop you are literally perfect

[youwontbelievethethingsiveread]

I love the dynamic between Amos and Avasarala very very much and could read an entire book just with the two of them bickering 💖

[yumyumpod]

[yumyumpod]

Watching The Expanse for the first time: Delta-V

[beaarthurpendragon]

Will never stop crying over Amos Burton

[xofemeraldstars]

[beaarthurpendragon]

I’m just saying if you want six seasons of a character that is very much like Bucky Barnes learning how to become a person despite unspeakable trauma, while saving the galaxy with his found family , then please watch The Expanse immediately (and then yell about it with me)

[autistic-artistech-deactivated2]

Black Characters in Science Fiction Naomi | The Expanse

Naomi Nagata is played by Dominique Tipper.

More information about this painting series below the fold!

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Support me | Commission me | Treat yo self | Watch me make art

[Likes are filtered out of my activity feed and notifications. If you like this post, it will go unnoticed. Consider reblogging instead/in addition for the benefit of everyone.]

Black representation in science fiction is severely lacking, even today. In order to highlight this issue and celebrate black actors in sci fi, I am painting my way down a list of black characters in sci fi with one-hour speed paints. I record my painting sessions and upload the videos as time lapses on YouTube, usually with commentary.

View the ever-growing gallery on my Ko-fi to see all the works I've completed and download the high-res art for free for personal use.

If there's a black character in sci fi that you love and don't see on the list, let me know with a reblog, comment, or message!

[infectiouspiss]

you have to stay alive. you're going to be such a beautiful middle aged freak. young freaks will see you in the street and know that things can be okay.

[scyllascriptor]

I made it. I made it. I made it!!!!

I am old enough to be a parent to a college-aged kid. I made it. It sucked. It was hard. I lost parts of my self I may never get back. But I made it.

You can make it too. You DON'T have to change who you are. You might have to hide things from time to time, but I want you to know that it shouldn't be about shame. It's about protecting those beautiful parts of yourself from harm and having the joy of them robbed from you. It doesn't make you any "less". Eventually all of those 'secrets' will be like spring bulbs. Beautiful bursts of color and life just waiting for a good, safe, warm day. You just gotta hold on.

You can make it. One day you'll be an old weirdo with creaking, crunching, knees. You will live long enough to see your own crow's feet. You'll stop caring about what other people think and honestly other people will stop caring about what you do. Eventually you get the "adultier adult" pass, and barely anyone gives you a second look. And if they talk shit you've got decades of practice under your belt and you can verbally eviscerate them for it. You can make it.

I got gray hair!!! I never thought I would. I love every one of the little wiry motherfuckers. I made it. You can make it.

[reallyndacarter]

Co-signed. Live!

[a-yearn-supreme]

I know the expanse fandom isn’t super big on tumblr, but the lack of Detective Josephus Miller thirst is astounding. You’re telling me tumblr dot com, lover of the saddest and wettest meow meows you’ve ever seen, isn’t losing their fucking minds over a washed up, recently divorced sci fi noir cop who’s falling in love with the (possibly) dead girl he’s been hired to track down until he gets roped into saving the universe between bouts of staring at her photo with big wet cow eyes isn’t sending all yall into hysterics??? Pathetic.

[a-yearn-supreme]

I know the expanse fandom isn’t super big on tumblr, but the lack of Detective Josephus Miller thirst is astounding. You’re telling me tumblr dot com, lover of the saddest and wettest meow meows you’ve ever seen, isn’t losing their fucking minds over a washed up, recently divorced sci fi noir cop who’s falling in love with the (possibly) dead girl he’s been hired to track down until he gets roped into saving the universe between bouts of staring at her photo with big wet cow eyes isn’t sending all yall into hysterics??? Pathetic.

[beaarthurpendragon]

I've been thinking a lot about why English-language Twitter has been losing its mind over this tweet--namely, over how startlingly similar the Dutch is to the English. (I've censored out the rest of Wilders' tweet because I don't want to give that man any more airtime.)

Some people are definitely just making fun of Dutch, which is gross and cruel. But I'm also seeing a lot of what I can only describe as joyful delight.

So why is it happening? Well, because "we hebben een serieus probleem" falls right into a kind of linguistic uncanny valley for English speakers.

Here's why:

The syntax is exactly the same as it is in English, which is very unusual for us! Even though English is a Germanic language, for old colonial reasons, the second and third languages most English speakers in the world are exposed to are French and Spanish--both Romance languages. Romance languages have different syntax (for example, adjectives coming after nouns instead of before, or using articles for nouns in ways that we don't). So most English speakers are primed to expect a different sentence structure when they encounter another language.

Every single word is a cognate! While English has a lot of Latin-root words, cognates (words that sound alike and mean similar things in both languages) are few and far between. Even then, many of those cognates are false (they sound alike but don't mean the same thing). So encountering five true cognates in a row feels like getting a hole in one, blindfolded.

It reads exactly the way English speakers would fake or bastardize a foreign language. Especially in North America, we're familiar with Spanglish and Franglish. Often that just means using English words and just appending Spanish or French endings onto them to make it sound more Spanish or French (and vice versa). So to write fake Dutch, English speakers would most likely just pepper their English with a smattering of the double letters unique to Dutch. Unfortunately, there is also a fourth reason some English speakers have fixated on this:

4. Double vowels, in English, are often deployed for whimsical effect (think "whee" or "oof' or "eek"). Seeing them in unexpected places can seem funny to us. A mature person can acknowledge this without making fun of the language; unfortunately, not everyone out there is mature.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[weirdchristmas]

I have tried for years to discover something, anything, about this card with no success.

[redscharlach]

We seven lobsters of Christmastide are Snapping our pincers we wander afar Frowning grimly, wondering dimly Where did we park the car?

[elodieunderglass]

The lobster and the crab, when they are full grown

Of all the bugs in the sea, the lobster bears the crown;

The rising of the sun, the wheeling of the gulls,

The playing of the castanets, sweet singing of the choir.

[fremedon]

O come, ye crustaceans Rubicund and shining O come ye, o come ye Across the strand.

Come ye, you seven Upright and bipedal O wave your feelers heav'nward O wave your feelers heav'nward O wave your feelers heav'nward Lobsters all.

[glassmirrormask]

Away in a desert No ocean in sight The seven red lobsters Were marching upright

The birds in the sky Looked down where they trod The lonely crustaceans All searching for God.

[elodieunderglass]

🥹 so festive

[farmside-deactivated20251226]

watched this for the first time when i was 14 i think? it saved me

[papergardener]

Knew what this was before I clicked and had to watch the whole thing again.

If you haven’t seen it, now’s your chance!

[modmad]

ten years later still get shook

[andisupreme]

The universal urge--young and old--to pretend you're the one conducting

[beaarthurpendragon]

This is like the classical music version of Tom Holland's "Umbrella" performance -- you're required to reblog it whenever it comes across your dash! Sorry, I don't make the rules.

[sadanandaom]

[1oldbear]

As should we all.

[headspace-hotel]

You know what? Destroy the "people in rural areas are all ignorant conservatives" stereotype and start mocking the "trad"/anti-feminist/neonazi people that are obsessed with rural areas despite having never been to one

[headspace-hotel]

I'm absolutely laughing my ass off at all these "Traditional Femininity" blogs that post nothing but aesthetic photos of supposed "Rural Life"

Lady this is a skinny influencer in a frilly white dress that's never had dirt on it, with her hair in professionally-done beachy waves, doing a photoshoot in a field using a basket of strawberries bought at walmart as a prop.

If you saw an actual woman farmer you would think you were seeing the Masculinization Of Women By The Degenerate Left

[beowulf22121]

Can confirm, went to school with farm folk. The wrestling team was afraid of the 4H and Future Farmers of America girls.

[aqueerkettleofish]

I live in a no-stoplight-no-starbucks-no-fast-food town in the backwoods of Virginia, and I have seen a toothless redneck at the gas station go off on someone for being a dick about a trans woman, telling him that if he didn't want to show some basic manners, he should move up north.

[antique-scarecrow]

good time to remember that the Southern U.S. population is significantly more progressive and ethnically diverse than you've been taught to believe.

southern states are gerrymandered to hell--specifically to prevent the majority from overthrowing the conservative political chokehold. this is by design and a direct inheritance of the civil war (to keep former slaves and their descendants as politically disenfranchised as possible). Southern politics do not reflect southern reality. And neither do media portrayals. there is a reason the media wants you to think of the south as white, conservative, poor, and uneducated: to keep southern progressives isolated. to alienate northern liberals from disenfranchised southerners (especially southerners of color).

it's just another divide-and-conquer strategy. because that's what conservatives are good at--controlling the narrative in order to rewrite history and sow discord between groups that should be helping each other. Because unity is powerful, and it makes us dangerous.

tl;dr the south has always been more liberal than you think, it's the decades of voter suppression & systematic disenfranchisement controlling the narrative. (and yes this extends to gender and queer issues too)

[beaarthurpendragon]

Southern politics do not reflect southern reality.

Look, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. The Klan exists. Racism--huge, pernicious, ugly racism--exists. Antisemitism and anti-Catholicism and Islamophobia exist. Sexism exist. Homophobia and transphobia are all prevalent. But.

BUT.

When you survey the people, you wind up with Southern states that are a hell of a lot more purple than their governments suggest. Gerrymandering is a huge problem. So is voter access. So are the fucking churches. God, the churches. People are so, so, so afraid of going against their pastors, and their church's culture of surveillance and fear, that they vote against their own beliefs all the fucking time.

As an aside, that is why school board elections are so fucking important. SO FUCKING IMPORTANT. Because the religious right wants to pack those boards, and that affects what books kids get to read and what they get taught in school, and everything, every FUCKING thing flows from that. Because it is so much harder to wake someone up in their twenties or forties or sixties than it is just teach them how to be a decent human being in kindergarten instead of a mindless slave to white nationalist patriarchy and capitalism.

And the thing is--these are low-turnout elections. School board elections are ones where you can make a big difference quickly. So do the most boring, most important thing in the world, and vote in your school board elections.